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Pakatan Harapan wants the early votes to be counted on the same day they are cast, claiming that keeping them until the polling day would lead to fraud.

PKR vice president Nurul Izzah Anwar said counting the early votes as soon as the ballots are closed would ensure a fair election process.

The early votes for both the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections are scheduled to be cast on Tuesday. Polling is on Saturday.

The government team has once again failed in winning Jamaat-e-Islami support on its ToRs for Panamagate probe, The Nation has learnt.

Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique and IT Minister Anusha Rahman yesterday met JI chief Sirajul Haq to win his party’s support on government made terms of reference but the latter expressed his concerns over the way government was handling this matter, a JI leader told this scribe quoting meeting discussion.

Iraq has approved measures requested by the International Monetary Fund to unlock loans that should help the country overcome a cash crunch caused by declining oil revenue, a senior government official said.

The agreement, reached last month between Iraq and the IMF, "is on track", Mudher Salih, an adviser on financial policy to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, told Reuters late on Sunday.

A bomb exploded outside the headquarters of Lebanese Blom Bank in central Beirut on Sunday, causing damage but no fatalities, the interior minister said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The Lebanese banking sector has been at the centre of an escalating crisis since the United States passed a law requiring banks to take steps to target the finances of the armed Shi'ite political group Hezbollah.

Commander of the United Nations’ most dangerous peacekeeping mission is not a title that Major General Michael Lollesgaard relishes.

A Malian pro-government militia has killed eight Islamist fighters in a gunbattle in northern Mali, two security sources said on Sunday.

Clashes between the militia and the Macina Liberation Front erupted on Saturday in Gourma-Rharous village, in the Timbuktu region of Mali which has long been plagued by Islamist militants, a military source and one from the militia told Reuters by telephone.

They had no details of how the clashes started.

This month marks the one-year anniversary of a fragile peace accord between the Mali government and Tuareg separatists. But after twelve months to make progress, you wouldn’t know it.

French forces had allegedly driven extremists out of northern Mali, but the attacks have not abated. Several extremist groups are still very active in northern Mali, with roots traced back to al-Qaeda. And they are causing problems for everyone.

Parti Amanah Negara president Mohamad Sabu says Islamic law is to bring happiness and prosperity to mankind, reports Sin Chew Daily.

He said Amanah’s stance is that Islamic law would solve all human problems.

Amanah, DAP and PKR are working together as Pakatan Harapan now.

Before this, Amanah was part of PAS and its ultimate aim was to implement PAS’ hudud.

Mat Sabu stressed that Amanah would not allow others to influence its religious mission.